1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to blade servers and more specifically, to an ATCA locking mounting structure for enabling a motherboard blade to be locked to a machine case of a server system and electrically connected to the server system quickly without any tools.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, many enterprises install relatively cheaper mini servers to satisfy network traffic requirements. In order to improve further economic effect, blade servers are developed. A blade server is essentially a housing for a number of individual minimally-packaged computer motherboard “blades”, each including one or more processors, computer memory, computer storage, and computer network connections, but sharing the common power supply and air-cooling resources of the chassis. The idea is that by placing many blades in a single chassis, and then 19-inch rack-mounting them, systems can be more compact and powerful, but less expensive than traditional systems based on mainframes, or server farms of individual computers (see Blade server from Wikipedia).
The most attractive advantage of a blade server is its high reliability and extendibility. Every blade server has the backup function. The hot plugging of the server machine case that supports blade servers and system component parts provides high applicability. When one individual blade server failed, another blade server can take the place without interrupting the service of the system. When wishing to increase the processing power of the system, it needs only to insert more blade servers and to arrange these resources at the place where the demand is heavy.
Because blade servers provide the function of hot plugging function, plug and unplugging actions will be frequently seen in blade servers. The machine case of a blade server has an accommodation chamber and parallel rails arranged at different elevations in the accommodation chamber so that motherboard blades can be inserted into the accommodation chamber along the rails. After insertion of motherboard blades into the accommodation chamber of the machine case, the screws at each motherboard blade are respectively threaded into associating screw holes at the two opposite side panels of the machine case to fix each motherboard blade to the machine case. A motherboard blade generally has a locking lever provided at one side of the board. As shown in FIG. 7, the locking lever A is pivotally connected to one side of the face panel B1 of the motherboard blade B with a screw bolt A2. After insertion of the motherboard blade B in the machine case C of the server system, the locking lever A is biased to force a retaining portion A1 of the locking lever A into engage a part C1 of the machine case C and to touch a sensor switch B2, giving a signal indicative of positive positioning of the motherboard blade B. This locking lever mounting design has drawbacks as follows:                1. The connection area between the locking lever A and the screw bolt A2 wears quickly with use, resulting in vibration of the locking lever A and locking instability.        2. When the connection area between the locking lever A and the screw bolt A2 starts to wear, the locking lever A may be unable to trigger the sensor switch B2 accurately, resulting in operation abnormality of the motherboard blade B.        
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an ATCA locking lever mounting structure that eliminates the aforesaid problem.